Starlink tells Brazil regulator it will not comply with X suspension | Hacker News Reader

Starlink tells Brazil regulator it will not comply with X suspension

reuters.com

25 pointsjmsflknr29 comments

[dupe]

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41423518

So Musk company says it will not Block usage of other Musk company.

It's not 100% Musk owned, so I got curious if the other owners could boot Musk over this, but Wikipedia says ownership is "Elon Musk (42% equity; 79% voting control)". Could Musk be vulnerable to a suit alleging he is unduly benefiting another company he owns instead of the interests of SpaceX?

What motive does SpaceX have to block X though Starlink? Their assets are frozen, they're operating in Brazil for free.

What motive SpaceX would have to follow the law and distance itself from X? Idk man, maybe a responsible management.

Exactly, if SpaceX obeys the court they can get their assets unfrozen and back to making a profit.

This didn't seem possible to me? SpaceX's assets weren't frozen because SpaceX did anything wrong, they were frozen to penalize the majority stakeholder. Said stakeholder has at this point approximately zero chance of an amicable resolution in Brazilian courts, so SpaceX acting at distance wouldn't get them their assets back.

> they were frozen to penalize the majority stakeholder

I'm no lawyer but from what I gather there's two issues with Starlink, one where they had their bank accounts blocked to make them pay for Twitter's fines, which is highly controversial and they could appeal it, and one where they could lose their operating license for openly refusing the general order to all ISPs in Brazil to block Twitter. If they blocked Twitter and appealed on the quite reasonable grounds that they are different companies they would have a much better chance of returning to normal operations in Brazil.

SpaceX's Starlink assets were frozen before X was banned.

Yes yes but openly flouting the court order to block Twitter is not helping their case. It's being used as an argument to retroactively justify the minister's argument that Starlink and Twitter are part of the same corporate group and therefore Starlink should pay for Twitter's fines.

But this only matters if SpaceX had any chance of a reversed decision from that court, which to my eyes they simply didn't. X is not going less deep in the hole by posting a bunch of confidential court orders.

There is virtually zero chance that a US court would find Elon Musk or any of his corporate entities liable in a hypothetical suit brought by SpaceX minority shareholders alleging some sort of conflict of interest. Brazil is a very minor market for SpaceX, and legal precedents gives very wide latitude to corporate management for these kind of decisions.

This is asinine. Could you imagine a utility in the USA breaking the law like this?

Sonic.net or various other ISPs? https://www.theverge.com/2013/7/21/4541342/isp-owner-describ...

The Reuters article says:

> "The decision to freeze Starlink's accounts stems from a separate dispute over unpaid fines X was ordered to pay due to its failure to turn over some documents."

This is deliberately misleading. The dispute stems from X having revealed a history of the government of Brazil demanding it censor and deanonymize political opponents and people alleging corruption, and refusing to continue doing so.

It's factually correct. Regardless of inferred or real motivations the legal devices in place are clear and easy to follow.

X refused to comply with court order. That would not fly in the US either.

Court issues fine and threatens further action.

X closes the office in Brazil to keep ignoring rulings.

Court gives ultimatum for obeying the order or appoint legal representative in the country.

Starlink is grouped as part of the same "economic group" and has its accounts frozen. This is the most arguable decision here so far. Still most agree it would be issued anyways but more steps were necessary for that. It's not about who owns but about who controls it.

After the end of the ultimatum period, court order the blocking of X to every ISP operating in Brazil.

Starlink shoots itself in the foot and refuses the order proving they're not as separate to X as some argue.

Next episodes to follow.

Even their tactic here is weird. "Were not gonna follow court orders until our accounts are unfrozen" instead of complying and properly appealing. They appealed using the wrong process and the judge itself wrote that it was weirdly on purpose because they admitted that they knew the right procedure but seem to want to collect bad decisions to garner sympathy

So are they paying their fines or not? Disagreeing with censorship doesn’t mean you get to not adhere to the law.

If they no longer operate in a particular country then that means they get to not adhere to the law.

Starlink definitively operates in Brazil as of right now, Internet service works (including ex-Twitter).

Just because you can pick up a satellite signal in a certain country doesn't mean that the satellite operator is operating (from a legal perspective) in that country. A country's airspace legally extends only up to a certain altitude.

In theory Brazil could try to force SpaceX to stop by taking legal action through the US court system, or administrative action through the international bodies that coordinate satellite communications frequencies and orbits, but that would be unlikely to work.

That's actually an interesting point. As of before this dispute, Starlink obviously operated in Brazil because it operates ground stations in and has paying Brazilian clients. Assuming it continues operating without that, I wonder what would happen. I mean, it's like insulting a random dictator on the Internet while living in another country, right? As long as they aren't willing to send in their hit squad with some Polonium not much they can do. So unless the Brazilian government is going to start shooting at the satellites or those legal channels you mention which I also am not convinced would work.

Oh by the way, there seems there's going to be a very large fine for Brazilians circumventing the block to access ex-Twitter. So it may just be on the client side, if anything actually happens.

They’ve already said they’ll make the service free for customers in Brazil if necessary.

Brazil is not downing satellites. It's blocking bank accounts. They can issue other penalties like revoke isp licenses, I wonder if you can also block traffic from that network (imagine you cannot access your online banking because your provider is illegal), but hey, at least you can still go on X.

that’s going to have many world-wide implications

And yet people on HN keep downvoting me for supporting Elon doing this. I don’t get the people here. Remove Elon from equation, imagine it’s your company.

This is a good point. Whomst among us would not leverage our massive wealth and platform and torch our businesses to try and influence the politics of another country by supporting a group that attempted a coup?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/07/world/americas/brazil-pol...

It seems to me that for the most part they disagree with this through a mix of emotionally reactionary hatred of Musk for not being one of those billionaires who spouts all the usual correct-think platitudes, and out of a nonsensical supportiveness for the current government in Brazil, it being of the left and opposed to Bolsanero, despite the autocratic nature of its court rulings against "disinformation".

It's amusing how in other cases, social media companies and tech companies get shit upon for adhering to the rulings of certain autocratic, censoring governments, but then if one actually makes pretty evidently firm stand as in this case, it's suddenly an irresponsible and reckless thing.

Yet Elon Musk said that following government censorship requests is the right thing to do:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMajorityReport/comments/13h0qon/...

That's disingenuous

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